Many fast food restaurants offering food service at a counter typically furnish paper products, such as napkins, to their customers for wiping their hands, faces, etc. These napkins are available in manual dispensers located throughout the restaurant or presented to customers when they receive their food order. Regardless of how the napkins are dispensed, these restaurants experience needless paper product waste that increases their operating costs.
With manual dispensers, restaurant management possess no control over the amount of napkins a customer takes. As a result, many customers take an excessive amount of napkins which are left behind at the restaurant and wasted, or taken for purposes unrelated to the restaurant that paid for them.
In an attempt to stop the waste of paper product, some restaurants have relied on their employees working at the counter to dispense the napkins with the belief that a more efficient distribution could be made. Unfortunately, restaurant employees have not been able to consistently control the amount of napkins being manually distributed to customers.
Accordingly, there remains a need for addressing the problem of excessive paper product waste in restaurants. It is desirable to provide an automatic napkin dispenser which quickly and efficiently dispenses single napkins as controlled by individual engagement of an actuating control on the dispenser.